Holy fucking crap.  The kids are napping and I caught the news about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in CT. I can still taste the bile on my throat as I fight the tears, it’s so sickening.  27 right now including 18 kids – most likely kindergartners, according to the news reports right now – and who knows what the final body count will be.

Are we getting number to this stuff? The Dark Knight rises movie shooting? A dim memory. Just a few days ago a shooting at an Oregon mall. I think we all try to rationalize things like this.  I start to think that just aybe it’s just a part of being in this world, accepting risk that something like that might happen to you if you go out. Hell, we lived through the DC sniper shootings where every open window,  every public appearance meant potential death. I still remember walking in zig zags in a mall parking lot, in some attempt to throw off a potential shooter if they were targeting me. Crazy enough.

But this – this DEFIES any attempt to make sense of. These kids were in their class, with their teacher, where they were supposed to be safe. Maybe it’s so raw because this morning J. and I were at A.’s school, a little holiday party for the kids. They sang a song, did some crafts and had a snack. Imagining something shattering that joy, someone coming in and…. I can’t even think about it without feeling raw. It’s somehow MORE of a violation, more than a mall or movie shooting. As fucked up as that is, because that means we live in a world where being shot at when going out in public is *somehow* fathomable. Not condonable or understandable or reasonable, but somehow pedestrian.
When things like this happen the inevitable talk about gun control occurs. I have always been a moderate on this (as most issues), I can see both sides. But I don’t know. I don’t know how something like this doesn’t make you think that access to a gun – whether lawful or not – doesn’t make shit like this possible. We can’t eliminate bat-shit crazy people, but why make it easier for them to act out on their thoughts? Sure, they could use a knife or an axe or some other weapon, but pointing a gun and pulling a trigger makes it too easy. Fuck it, ban them all.